Ryan
Lyn makes plenty of sense, keeps things simple and I enjoy her take it or leave it approach. At the end of the day the facts are what wins it for you and she speaks facts. I think I've made inquiry learning out to be something beyond what it is. I think inquiry learning in my room atleast will improve in both quantity and quality after Patuha.
I wasn't very happy losing the connect four to Becs, but I'll go away, look at what I can do better and come back bigger and stronger
Teaching as Inquiry Teacher planning and reflections
My name: Ryan Fleming
Class Level: 3 & 4
Achievement Target: What outcomes am I aiming to achieve? What outcomes do I want my students to achieve?
Timeframe:
Discovery
Focusing
Initial plan. What am I going to do? Develop? Strengthen? Why? I want to strengthen my childrens ability to think and organise their ideas more independently. Give them tools to stimulate their own thinking (self talk/self questioning and answering, if you will) so that a higher percentage of my "teacher talk" can be based on accurate, relevant, helpful feedback alongside thought inspiring questioning and the techniques that are co-requisites for this.
Potential – what might be? Prioritise outcomes. Baseline: Find out what students can already do and what more they need to learn. Refer to National Curriculum and other resources
Reflective questions
Post reflections here
Dates
Why am I focusing on this?
School Focus Powerful Competency that is directly related to learning capacity.
What level are my students presently at? How do I know?
Held Discussions on graphic organisers and their use.Invited children to write questions - no knowledge of terms "open" and "closed" but when these terms were explained children were able to create both.
21/6
What barriers to learning need to be overcome? What resources will I need?
Personal understanding of thinking tools in Te Tipunga toolbox.Have an understanding of De Bono’s hats.
Other observations, reflections or ideas to try
Designing
Teaching
What is my plan for doing this? What strategies will I try? How will I change my practice?
What craft knowledge do I already have? Search your own and colleagues' past practice for strategies that may be more effective. Research to see what has worked for other teachers and contexts. Formulate a plan.
Reflective Questions
Post reflections here
Dates
What new teaching strategies & tools will I use?
Ti Tipunga Syndicate Thinking Toolbox. Graphic oragnisers and hats in particular.
What are the key steps for implementing my inquiry in the classroom?
Turning professional knowing into professional development. Plan and implement use of the tools.Graphic organisers through reading, writing and inquiry investigations.Thinking hats as part of all discussions and debates.
What methods & ICTs will I use to track & record student change/achievement and how often?
Administered a guided assessment on thinking tools. Notice the impact on all learning areas.Plan into inquiry and reading, writing programmes
Other observations, reflections or ideas to try
Delivering
Learning
Put my plan into action. Monitor; collect evidence; write regular dated reflections; interpret data. Plan next steps
Monitor students' progress towards identified outcomes and reflect on what this tells you. Use this new information to decide what to do next to ensure continued improvement in student achievement and in your own practice.
Reflective Questions
Post reflections here
Dates
How am I infusing my ideas into classroom practice?
Introduce, provide opportunities to use, then allow independent choice. Really important that they are used in relevant situations. The "firsts" theory. If the children see how well the work when they use them for the first time then they are more likely to use them again.
Use of Thinking Hats to analyse the viewpoints of those in a video - to show that people do think from lots of different perspectives.
Introduction of Q matrix. Opportunities to experiment with questioning with a familiar topic (water).
Guided use of graphic organisers for writing
Independent choice of graphic organisers.
Children are now altering Y charts to suit their needs for planning their writing.
Guided use of Graphic Organisers for reading. Specifically selected books/topics with an organiser in mind to ensure that the first time each child uses a certain organiser it has value and "works".
Guided choice of graphic organiser to assess differences, characters, themes within texts
Early T2
Late T2
What am I learning from monitoring student outcomes?
that these tools are powerful, motivating for children & their mastery is well within the childrens grasp. Children are already actively, independently choosing one organiser over another. Seem quite secure in their choice (independent, no copying off their mate beside them)
Class discussions already flow more - vast increases in the generation of ideas across the room. The hats are brilliant for providing a framework for children to think from when they are unsure of what to say or "what to think"
What are the next steps I need to take? (Research, resources, activities)
Encourage further independence in their use?
Use them consistently throughout topical inquiry, co construct their use/choice. Select with kids.
Other observations, reflections or ideas to try
Evaluating
Summarising
Analyse data and observations and draw conclusions. Prepare and present findings to colleagues.
Reflect on progress, observations: current versus initial data. How did it go? What strategies have made a difference to my students' learning? How do I know?
Reflective Questions
Post reflections here
Dates
What methods will I use to collect ‘end’ data?
I expect that effective use of these thinking tools will lift "thinking capacity and achievement in all "traditional" areas of learning (reading, writing, maths). Therefore, current assessments still remain valid - eg gloss (strategising ability) running records (& comprehension should increase because the graphic organisers help to organise ideas and in pictorial form for those that need it...flow diagrams etc). The use of graphic organisers has already given my lower level writers a platform to write from/with. Feel as now I can give feedback on language techniques as well as helping to generate ideas and motivate.
What conclusions can I draw from data analysis?
What are my main points?
Specifically how will I share my Inquiry with my colleagues?
Specific:Creating open questions to help us find out what we need to know to make bottled water. Use the black hat alongside it – what could go wrong or what would stop us doing this.
Who was involved? Whole class
What resources did I use?
Question Matrix
What did the activity involve?
Independent generation of questions from all class members using the question matrix/chart. Very little teacher support for some. We had used it before just to have a look at but this time it was absolutely relevant and the children could see how it would help us generate questions that when answered would alleviate and problems.
e.g. WHO MIGHT be able to tell us if it is legal for us to make bottled water?
Why was this activity successful?
Everybody came up with atleast a couple of relevant questions that they DIDN’T KNOW THE ANSWER TOO AND THOUGHT WE SHOULD FIND OUT.
Some children were able to fill the entire chart with relevant questions.
These questions generated debate and ideas “we could do this” “yes what about that” “I know who could help us with that” etc
The children didn’t fill in any of the “DID” section and when I asked they stated “because we haven’t “done” anything yet. This impressed me a lot – shows that they were really engaged in generating relevant questions that needed to be answered (not just questions for questions sake).
The children are becoming more content with idea that they aren’t expected to know everything but that we can find out and we are learning the ways to do so.
How could I use this in other ways?
I can see lots of variations. Use it in groups to help generate debate and ideas on all sorts of ideas, themes, and strategies. Will use it for PE in our invasion game called “jailbreak” when we are generating strategies for attack and defense.
Use it individually alongside the black and yellow hat for new situations. Black problems, yellow answers??
Next time I would …
Maybe not present the kids with the Q chart but say “hey we need to start finding out and discovering, what should we do, what could we use to help us?”
Thinking Activity or Idea - week 9
Class Level: Year 3/4
Date: week 9
Learning Context: Written Language
Key Competency: ULST
Thinking Strategy or Tool: graphic organisers
(altering y chart, bubble map, T chart to suit ones
plan for a narrative)
Specific:
Who was involved? (class/group)
What resources did I use?
Y chart, Flow map, T chart, bubble map
What did the activity involve? deciding the criteria
for each section of the Y chart e.g. instead of looks like, feels
like etc it changed to plot, characters, setting and within those
sections children chose to use other organisers e.g. a flow map for the plot
& a traditional Y chart for character.
Why was this activity successful?
Student directed, increased confidence and independence from
all children, particularly struggling writers.
How could I use this in other ways?
Next time I would … reduce my influence during the planning/idea creation stage even more?
Lyn makes plenty of sense, keeps things simple and I enjoy her take it or leave it approach. At the end of the day the facts are what wins it for you and she speaks facts. I think I've made inquiry learning out to be something beyond what it is. I think inquiry learning in my room atleast will improve in both quantity and quality after Patuha.
I wasn't very happy losing the connect four to Becs, but I'll go away, look at what I can do better and come back bigger and stronger
Baseline: Find out what students can already do and what more they need to learn. Refer to National Curriculum and other resources
Research to see what has worked for other teachers and contexts. Formulate a plan.
Use this new information to decide what to do next to ensure continued improvement in student achievement and in your own practice.
Use of Thinking Hats to analyse the viewpoints of those in a video - to show that people do think from lots of different perspectives.
Introduction of Q matrix. Opportunities to experiment with questioning with a familiar topic (water).
Guided use of graphic organisers for writing
Independent choice of graphic organisers.
Children are now altering Y charts to suit their needs for planning their writing.
Guided use of Graphic Organisers for reading. Specifically selected books/topics with an organiser in mind to ensure that the first time each child uses a certain organiser it has value and "works".
Guided choice of graphic organiser to assess differences, characters, themes within texts
Late T2
Class discussions already flow more - vast increases in the generation of ideas across the room. The hats are brilliant for providing a framework for children to think from when they are unsure of what to say or "what to think"
Use them consistently throughout topical inquiry, co construct their use/choice. Select with kids.
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The student asks non- relevant questions which do not contain contextual key words or phrases or are statements rather than questions.
Asks yes/no/maybe questions using relevant key words and phrases (is, can, does, could, may, do, would etc.)
Uses the Seven Servants
(Who, what, when, where, why, how, which) and key words to write relevant questions.
Student uses the Seven Servants, relevant key words and phrases to create relevant questions.
Uses relevant synonyms of key words to edit questions.
Uses multiple question words to create a probing question when interviewing an ‘expert’.
Whole class working in 3s.
Using photos in a logical sequence to display a process we went through to find information. Range of ICT skills.
New skills, engaging and fun – reinforced and gave children a chance to demonstrate their understanding
Demonstrations of understanding
Roll it through a rotation programme for individuals to achieve.
Critical Thinking
Question Matrix
Independent generation of questions from all class members using the question matrix/chart. Very little teacher support for some. We had used it before just to have a look at but this time it was absolutely relevant and the children could see how it would help us generate questions that when answered would alleviate and problems.
e.g. WHO MIGHT be able to tell us if it is legal for us to make bottled water?
I can see lots of variations. Use it in groups to help generate debate and ideas on all sorts of ideas, themes, and strategies. Will use it for PE in our invasion game called “jailbreak” when we are generating strategies for attack and defense.
Use it individually alongside the black and yellow hat for new situations. Black problems, yellow answers??
Maybe not present the kids with the Q chart but say “hey we need to start finding out and discovering, what should we do, what could we use to help us?”
(altering y chart, bubble map, T chart to suit ones
plan for a narrative)
Y chart, Flow map, T chart, bubble map
for each section of the Y chart e.g. instead of looks like, feels
like etc it changed to plot, characters, setting and within those
sections children chose to use other organisers e.g. a flow map for the plot
& a traditional Y chart for character.
Student directed, increased confidence and independence from
all children, particularly struggling writers.